What to expect as Israel, South Africa face off over Gaza genocide case at ICJ

Having submitted a complaint against Israel on Dec. 29, accusing it of genocide in Gaza, South Africa is set to present Thursday morning its arguments to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in The Hague. After a short swearing-in of the judges, the South African team headed by law professor John Dugard will have about three hours to plead its case. The Israeli side, led by British professor Malcolm Shaw, will similarly get three hours the following day to explain why the South African petition should be rejected.

The court is composed of a fixed panel of 15 judges, each elected to a nine-year term by the UN General Assembly and Security Council. Judges are selected in a way that provides diverse geographical representation, with no more than one judge from a single country. Presently, it includes judges from the United States, France, Japan, Germany, Australia, Slovakia, Brazil, Jamaica, India, Uganda, China, Somalia, Russia, Lebanon and Morocco. Still, in every such case, both sides can ask for their own judge to be appointed — an ad-hoc judge — to the existing panel. As such, South Africa picked former Deputy Chief Justice Dikgang Moseneke, and Israel picked former Supreme Court Chief Justice and Holocaust survivor Aharon Barak. 

What South Africa claims

South Africa claims that the military operation Israel launched against Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack has violated the 1948 genocide convention, to which Israel is a signatory. Pretoria submitted to the court a document including several demands. In a nutshell, we can say that South Africa is asking in the short run to order Israel to completely stop its military operations in the Gaza Strip, stop the displacement of Gazans and enable the unlimited entry of humanitarian aid. In the long run, South Africa is asking the court to rule that Israel is guilty of genocide.